Father Ohrwalder may or may not have been ill-advised in omitting or suppressing the relation of well-known incidents, which accounted for Gordon’s attitude in certain cases. It was only by omitting to mention these incidents that the criticisms on Gordon were rendered possible, or I should say that, had those incidents been included, the criticisms would not have lived a day. It would have been far better to tell everything to the generous and sympathetic world which he and Slatin met when they escaped, and to leave it to condone, if any condoning was called for, and to sympathize with them in the parts force of circumstances compelled them to act, which must have been so repugnant to them; for to omit, when criticizing Gordon, the relation of the very acts which compelled him also by force of circumstances to act as he did, was, to say the least of it, very unwise. In “Ten Years’ Captivity” the reader is led into a maze of opinions, and left there. Once inside, you |309| discover that you can neither gain the centre of the maze or return to the starting-point; you must either wander round for an eternity, or do as I shall do, cut your way through the hedges planted to bewilder you, and thank Heaven when on the outside that you are clear of the tortuous passages. Compare, for instance― “He (Cudzi) added that Gordon should have no anxiety about Berber as long as Hussein Pasha Khaleefa was Mudir,” with, “Gordon himself committed a mistake by which he gave a deathblow to himself and his mission. On his way to Khartoum, he stopped at Berber, and interviewed the Mudir Hussein Pasha Khaleefa; he _imprudently_ told him that he had come up to remove the Egyptian garrisons, as Egypt had abandoned the Soudan.” Gordon cannot be blamed for confirming, as Governor-General of the Soudan, the news telegraphed to his subordinate, the Mudir of Berber, _through whose hands the retiring garrisons must pass_, nor can he be blamed if, when his suspicions were aroused, he deferred to the opinion of the man who was acting British Consul, Government representative, and his own agent, when he wrote and telegraphed as he did, “Trust in Hussein Pasha.” “The catastrophe which had overtaken Hicks filled the inhabitants of Khartoum with indescribable dismay. Several of them returned to Egypt, and the members of the Austrian Mission, with their blacks, quitted Khartoum on the 11th December, 1883.” I therefore take it for granted that Father Ohrwalder’s fellow-workers saw that all was hopeless |310| _two months before Gordon’s name had been suggested to the Egyptian Government_, yet, in the face of this, we are first asked― “What could Gordon do alone against the now universally worshipped Mahdi?” and then told― “General Gordon’s arrival in Khartoum gave fresh life and hope to the inhabitants.” Then,